Among all the players in classical music, Mathieu Lussier could be named “conductor experimenter”. The bassoonist turned conductor and musical director of Arion is now artistic director of Domaine Forget in Charlevoix. In his new role, he observes the changes in a complex market.
No one has a magic recipe for bringing audiences back to theaters after the pandemic. During his last concert of the season at the Orchester Métropolitain, Yannick Nézet-Séguin addressed a full house to ask spectators to come back next season. We suspect that attendance in 2023-2024 did not live up to expectations. On the other hand, Clemens Schuldt, in Quebec, seems to have found good opportunities since at the end of May, the Quebec Symphony Orchestra had sold as many tickets as in September of a normal year.
While the Domaine Forget International Festival officially begins Saturday at 4 p.m. with a concert by the Violons du Roy conducted by Jonathan Cohen, The duty wanted to take stock with Mathieu Lussier of his first festival, in 2023, and his ambitions for the 2024 edition.
The emulators
A first remark is necessary: a festival opening in the afternoon is something that we would not have imagined a few years ago. The question had already been addressed last year. The experience then seems to have borne fruit. “This year, Saturday concerts take place 50% in the afternoon and 50% in the evening. » The basis of the decision is simple: “A base of our audience comes from Quebec and, in the evening after a concert, it is dark, there can be mist, there are turnings and moose. So for an aging clientele who has the means, the time and the desire to go see concerts, having concerts in the afternoon represents an interesting offer. »
And there’s no shortage of that: “The afternoon concerts leave first, before the evening concerts.” It may not just be the move from Quebec, either: “The famous experience of going to dinner and going to the concert is being reversed. Now, people are telling us: ‘We’re going to the concert and we’re going to dinner afterwards,'” analyzes Mathieu Lussier.
The observation made in 2023 by the music industry’s leading researcher has been emulated. Thus, in 2024, all Saturday concerts at the Orford Musique festival will take place at 4:30 p.m. “The concerts that have remained in the evening are notably the jazz concerts, which bring in a more nocturnal clientele,” says Mathieu Lussier. “The stakes are so high on how to bring the public back, make them want to go to the venue, that we need to multiply the formulas. Parity, 50-50, is not an established recipe.”
The artistic director of Domaine Forget distinguishes between the faithful, who “wait for the program and buy packages,” and the public, “who come during the weekend, who will be there by chance.” He thinks that the former will be won over and cares a lot about the latter category. “I insisted that there be flags on the road saying “Concert this afternoon” or “Concert this evening.” Each program is composed so that anyone who passes through Saint-Irénée does not come across something dry or overly protein-filled. We must not lose people who come by chance. So I try to avoid programs where the person I don’t know who arrives at our place would be told: “Ah, he’s come at a bad time!” Mathieu Lussier thinks that it is possible to have substance, but in a way that is not off-putting.
This was also the main topic of our 2023 interview, now formulated as follows: “Let’s work on the container without lightening the content.”
Convert free
We also note a diversification of venues with free concerts at the Saint-Irénée church, something that seems new. “We bought the church two years ago to transform it into a dance studio. In 2023, we did a test with two concerts in the church. The first, on a Friday at 4 p.m., with Franz Krommer and Amy Beach, was sold out. We did it again with the young people from the Academy [internationale de musique et de danse du Domaine Forget] at the end of the festival. So we said to ourselves that we were going to make it a new meeting. » Faced with the potential barrier to purchasing concert tickets, “entering a church for free and listening to music is not a problem”.
Obviously, Mathieu Lussier will take advantage of the opportunity to do a test. The July 14 concert at the church, with Les Voix humaines, will therefore be paid: “We will compare the free Sunday afternoons and what will happen if we offer a concert at an affordable price. In addition, with two violas da gamba, the church is perfect: it is advantageous to get close to the sound source.”
There are other tests. For example, the series “Le Domaine sur la route” developed with “Les concerts de la Rive”. “We have a new partnership with Saint-Joseph-de-la-Rive. Local residents bought their church and expressed interest in having concerts. There are still people who don’t know what the Domain is and where it is. The challenge is to introduce the Domaine and bring the public to experience the music then on the site, in the concert hall. »
We hope for him that Mathieu Lussier will have the chance to convince fans of these free concerts to join him at the Domaine. Denis Brott, artistic director of the Montreal Chamber Music Festival, recently suggested to us that there was no permeability between the free public and the paying public.
Mathieu Lussier recognizes the scale of the challenge. “The action of buying a ticket is key. There is no doubt that people listen to music. What works less is the reasoning: “I’m going to go listen to music by buying a ticket to go to the theater.” I don’t think any studies have been done for this purpose,” the artistic director tells us.
Mathieu Lussier thinks that “Domaine Forget is a perfect laboratory, because the people who are in the region are in a dynamic of experience. They are traveling, on vacation, whereas in Montreal, for example, there are traffic restrictions.”
Endemic problem
The lessons from the 2023 edition which influenced this year’s festival are also programmatic: “The programming is 75% or 80% linked to the artists who come to teach. During my first summer, I received many suggestions from our teaching artists. These were great concerts, but they were a bit similar. This year, I gave colors and themes. For example, in our “Prelude to Summer”, we programmed two concerts for winds. I gave the first one a French theme. The people who came to the two concerts had two contrasting experiences. »
Another lesson from 2023, the difficulty of selling “the big names who perform in between stages, without connection with what is happening at the Domaine”. “For example Chanticleer, the vocal group from San Francisco. There were few people there, although for me it was one of the great concerts of recent years. » The Emerson Quartet for its farewell tour, too, did not sell out, even though it was an event concert.
But all of this is an epiphenomenon compared to the big question of the hour. What is hanging over us, in Mathieu Lussier’s eyes, is “the financial uncertainty in the sector: the explosion of costs in the face of the maintenance or slight reduction in government participation”. “This means that our partners who come to present concerts have financial challenges that they must overcome.” In practice, bringing in the Orchestre Métropolitain and Les Violons du Roy costs more, while funding is stable. “If people don’t come back more and if we don’t find new patrons, the risk is that we will no longer be able to produce events that are up to par, because we will no longer be able to meet the demands of the sector’s stakeholders.”
Mathieu Lussier believes that “since the entire industry is in this, the solutions will have to come from the entire industry.” “We were all well supported during the pandemic, so people started producing a lot. Should we produce less? But producing less means generating less potential income…” Asking the question raises a big problem.
Would general states of classical music appear?